In Genesis 23 another instructive event opens on us. It is not the death of Hagar, who sets forth the Sinaitic or legal covenant: We might have expected some such typical matter and could all understand that. But the marvel is that, after the figure of the son Isaac led as a sacrifice to Mount Moriah but raised from it (a type of the death and resurrection of Christ), we have the death of Sarah. She is the one who represents the new covenant with Israel, not of the law but of grace. And what is the meaning of that type, and where does it find its answer in the dealings of God when we think of the fulfillment of the type? It is certain and also plain. In the Acts of the Apostles, not to speak of any other scripture, the true key is placed in our hands. When the Apostle Peter stood before the men of Israel and bore witness of the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus, the true Isaac, what did he tell them? This — that if they were willing by grace to repent and be converted, God would assuredly bring in those times of refreshing of which He had spoken by the mouth of all His holy prophets since the world began (Acts 3:19-2119Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord; 20And he shall send Jesus Christ, which before was preached unto you: 21Whom the heaven must receive until the times of restitution of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began. (Acts 3:19‑21)). He added that they were the children, not only of the prophets but of the covenant which God made with the fathers, saying unto Abraham, “In thy seed shall all the kindreds of the earth be blessed.”
There we have the required solution. Peter presented after this the readiness of God to bring in the blessedness of the new covenant, if they, by grace, bowed their stiff neck to the Lord Jesus. But they would not hearken: They rejected the testimony and finally put to death one of the brightest witnesses, in the person of Stephen. In point of fact, the unbelief was complete to the rejection of the testimony of the Holy Spirit founded on the death and resurrection of Christ, and, in consequence, that presentation of the covenant to Israel completely disappears. It was the fulfillment of what Sarah’s death was a type — the passing away for the time of all such overtures of the covenant to Israel. Nowhere do we hear of it renewed after that. No doubt Sarah will rise again, and so the new covenant will appear when God works in the latter day in the Jewish people. But meanwhile the presentation of the covenant to Israel, as that which God was willing there and then to bring in, which was the offer then made by grace, completely passes from view, and a new thing takes its place.
The Call of Rebekah
So it is here. Immediately after the death and burial of Sarah, a new person comes before us, another object distinct from what we have seen, and what is it? The introduction of a wholly unheard-of personage, called to be the bride of Isaac, the figuratively dead and risen son of promise. It is no more a question of covenant dealings. The call of Rebekah was not thought of before — it is altogether a fresh element in the history. Then again we have the type, so familiar to us, of Eliezer, the trusty servant of all that the father had, now the executor of the new purposes of his heart, who goes to bring the bride home from Mesopotamia, for as no maid of Canaan could be wedded to Abraham’s son, so he, Isaac, was not to quit Canaan for Mesopotamia. Eliezer was to bring the bride, if willing, but Isaac must not go there. Nothing is more strongly insisted on than this, and to its typical meaning I must call your attention. The servant proposes a difficulty: Suppose she is not willing to come? Is Isaac to go for her? “Abraham said unto him, Beware that thou bring not my son thither again.” When the church is being called as a bride for Christ, He remains exclusively in heavenly places. He has nothing to do with the world while the church is in process of being gathered from among Jews and Gentiles. He does not leave heaven, nor come to the world to have associations with the earth, while it is a question of forming the bride, the Lamb’s wife. In relation to the call of the church, Christ is exclusively heavenly. It is the very same Isaac who had been under the sentence of death sacrificially. As Isaac is raised again in figure and must on no account go from Canaan to Mesopotamia for Rebekah, so Christ is to have only heavenly associations, and none with the world, while the church-calling is in progress. When Christ has His associations with the world, we may have our place there too; if Christ is entirely outside it, as He is manifestly apart from it now in heaven, so should we be.
W. Kelly (adapted)